Empty
by penguins and snails
Summary: What would be a great discovery for the white coats and the rest of the human race would surely be hours of torture and agony for the alien about to be tested on. AU.


**Empty**

Blurry magenta eyes blinked open.

Blinded by the first sight of a bright light, he blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his vision in the bright light above him. His head pounded with a powerful headache which caused a dull moan to escape him. His throat felt dry and hoarse, as though he had been screaming for a long time. Which in his case would be no surprise.

Once his eyes adjusted under the light, he noticed the white ceiling over his head, and the light which hung over him. The light was moved away from his line of vision by a gloved hand. Zim turned to get a look at the owner of the hand, and noticed it's choice of clothing. The white coat, the mask over it's nose and mouth. The white gloves. His heart pounded faster in his chest. White coats are scientists, he realized, dread creeping up his spine. He went to move from the cold metal surface he was lying on and found that he couldn't.

Panic set in quickly. His heart was racing as he moved his head to get a better look at whatever was holding him down. Four leather straps. His eyes flashed over toward the figure who had moved the light away from him. A male scientist. Beside the man was yet another white coat, this one beside a metal tray.

How did he end up here? Where, how...? He didn't remember anything from before, nothing up until waking up on that cold table. Suddenly he began to worry, not for him, but for someone else.

"Where's Gir?" he asked, his voice weak. He moved his head to the other side, scanning the room best he could for his insane yet lovable robot companion. "What have you done to my..." his trailed off as, on the other side of the room, just a few feet next to him, was another cold metal table. Only there were parts of a machine lying on top. A robot, scraps of metal that appeared to have once been pieces of silver arms and legs, and a head, with now dead-black eyes, which were once a lively cyan-blue color...

_Gir._

His heart nearly stopped beating. That was his only friend lying in pieces a few feet beside him... The little SIR's last moments were probably spent in helpless pain and fear, wondering where his Master was...

The restrained Irken began to shake violently at the sight. He was suddenly blinded by rage, hatred, and a horrible pang of guilt, sorrow and regret. "HOW DARE YOU!" he screeched at the two white coats working over him, preparing him for a similar fate as his now-deceased trusted sidekick. He struggled in vain against the straps that held him down. "YOU HORRIBLE, WRETCHED BEINGS! WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE, I'LL-"

"You'll what?" One of the white coats chuckled, brining the metal tray closer to Zim. Now the Irken could clearly see what was lying in the tray. His eyes widened and he gulped nervously. His worst fear.

Knives, scalpels, drills and saws... Every type of torture device possible lied there on the tray. What would be a great discovery for the white coats and the rest of the human race would surely be hours of torture and agony for the alien about to be tested on.

The image of Gir flashed through Zim's head again, as he hopelessly stared up at the white coats. "What did Gir ever do to you?" It was true. Gir was more innocent than any other being probably in the entire universe. At least in Zim's eyes he was. Because, though as annoying as the little robot was to Zim at times, Gir didn't judge or hate anyone. Gir lived and loved and found joy in many simple things that Zim has found either stupid or annoying. Like tacos and piggies. A pure being was now nothing more than a dismantled mess, innocence nothing more than a heap of metal.

"He was a robot," one of the white coats said simply, bringing up a scalpel in front of him, observing it carefully. "Robots can't feel."

"You're wrong," Zim shouted. "WRONG! He had more feelings than any of you will ever have!"

"That's impossible," the other white coat replied, coming beside Zim on the other side of the bed. He was holding up something that Zim couldn't see. He grabbed a hold of Zim's arm.

"What are you-?" the question barely escaped Zim's lips before a sharp needle was injected into his arm. He watched as the white coat who injected him squeezed the top down, injecting Zim with a clear liquid. "What...?"

He was surprised by how advanced human medicine was. The injection took it's effect immediately, causing his eye sight to blur, his head to pound, sucking the feeling out of his body. He could only feel the cold table against his back, but nothing more. Confused, he tried to lift his arm, but found he couldn't even do that. "What is..." his voice was slurred, his body growing exhausted and tired. And that frightened him: feeling weak. "What did you...?"

"You won't feel a thing," the white coat who injected him said, though Zim couldn't see his face clearly.

The pounding in Zim's head grew louder, and the voices of the white coats became slightly muffled. But even in his dazed state, in the blur of his vision, he could clearly see the scalpel being brought slowly against his stomach. His eyes widened.

_This is it,_ he thought, and he began to mumble incoherently, something escaping past his lips that he couldn't clearly register nor hear. _They're going to cut me up. Sell my organs._

"We won't sell them," a white coat answered. "It's going to be used in research."

_They can hear me?_ More mumbling escaped his lips.

"Yes," the white coat holding the scalpel said, "We can hear you perfectly."

Zim forced his mind to be silent, not wanting them to hear his thoughts, to know the fear that he felt creeping up his spine. The fear he felt was genuine. Now only ramblings escaped him. _"Invader... No, defect... They left me here to die like this. Gir's dead, they killed him, and now they're going to kill me... I... can't believe... what's happening to me?"_ He felt the cold blade enter his stomach as the white coat made the first cut. _"Die... die... I'm going... to die..."_

"You won't die," the other white coat answered calmly. "You just won't wake up."

_I'd rather die!_ His mind screamed, and it escaped past his lips in a desperate yell. He felt cold, cold hands digging around inside his stomach, grabbing at his organs and cutting them out of their place. He heard the sounds of organs plopping on metal trays, the feeling of cold hands inside him, but there was no pain. Still, the realization that he was literally being ripped apart by the humans he tried so hard over the years to hide from, terrified him.

Despite feeling no pain, he still screamed.

His squeedly spooch was ripped out of him, and, though in a daze, he still watched as the other white coat grabbed his squeedly spooch, throwing it into a metal tray. Suddenly, the heart monitor beside him began beeping uncontrollably. He was having a panic attack, unable to breathe. The sight of his squeedly spooch out of his stomach nauseated him to an unbearable state.

"No," he moaned out, "No..."

They injected him again to calm him down, but it didn't help. It only made him feel weaker than before, only made his heart race quicker to an unsteady pace.

It wasn't until he felt the tears streaming down the sides of his face that he fully understood that he was going to die, in such a way that was once his darkest nightmares. Dying at the white gloves hands of the enemy, stained with dark green along with their sharp blade while they dissected him, as though he weren't even a living being. He would soon be nothing more than a cut up corpse covered in dry blood. A corpse missing all it's organs. He didn't want to die, especially not this way, but he would rather die soon than go through this anymore. He didn't have much of a choice.

Despite his fear, he narrowed his eyes. _No._ He didn't want to die. _Not like this._

He started screaming again, though incoherently. Wanting them to stop, threatening them for what they did to Gir. But he wouldn't beg them for his life. That would only show more weakness, and he wasn't willing to show them more. He didn't want to satisfy their sadistic needs to watch him cry and beg for mercy. The tears still streaming out of his eyes were partly in sorrow for his only friend lying close beside him in a heap of nothing but scraps of metal. Though he wouldn't admit it, the tears were also partly in contrast with the terror he felt. He was scared, and even now he wouldn't admit it, wouldn't accept it. So he continued screaming, shouting out random spurs of anger to cover up the fear he felt.

"Calm down," the other white coat commanded. "It'll all be over soon."

"_Fuck_ you," Zim snarled, barring his teeth at the white coat.

The white coat only stared down at Zim, and the Irken was sure he was smiling behind the mask. "Let's continue, shall we?"

To keep him quiet, growing irritated with the alien's screaming, the white coat with the scalpel began to cut open the Irken's throat, cutting out vocal cords and important muscles and tissue. He was no longer able to scream, or able to breathe for that matter. Why was he still alive? Why could he still barely breathe? He just wanted the horror the end, eyes dashing wildly across the room as he gasped, yet still desperately trying to get some sound to escape him, some air to inhale. Trying to draw in ragged breaths. When he tried to breathe, he only felt air escape through the gash in his throat. He was gasping wildly, like a fish out of water. He was beginning to swallow his own blood, choking on it. He could feel his warm, sticky blood trickling from the gash in his throat, and now he knew he was certainly dying.

It terrified him.

As the other white coat began cutting into Zim's legs and arms with a saw, cracking and tearing out his bones, the horrible, nauseating sounds echoing throughout the room, he began to fade away. He heard the saw going as it ripped into him, tearing skin, spraying green blood and cracking open bone, but it faded into the background as he tried desperately to escape into his mind, though still trying to keep himself alive. Just barely. Even though he was dying, and even though he wanted to die to make the nightmare end, he didn't want to die. He wanted to live. He was still trying to gasp for breath, his lungs contracting painfully from lack of oxygen before the white coats cut his lungs out as well.

He heard the white coats speaking, but their words were nothing but muffled facts of science, soft spoken observation at the mangled alien before them.

No longer able to speak, he could only pray in his mind that this torture would end.

_Please..._ He thought, his eyelids growing heavy._ Let this be over. Let me die now._ He hated himself for allowing himself to give up, slowly succumbing to the darkness that was surely death, but he couldn't handle it anymore. The bones cracking, the hands up inside his body as they tore out important organs essential to live, the horrifying sounds of blood dripping and organs being torn out of their places, and the warmth of his blood as it trailed out of the wounds in a cascade of green... It frightened him to no end.

To his relief, the darkness came, all feeling in his body fully fading away as he drew his last gasp of breath. But he could still hear them speaking, letting out amazed gasps and telling each other instructions on what to tear out or cut open next. They sounded amused.

But the ex-Invader Zim, -deemed a defect before meeting his fate on that cold metal table-, was no longer there. He couldn't breath, couldn't even think, but even in the silence of what might be his own afterlife, he could still hear them speaking as they hovered over his body. There was no heavenly light, no peace... Only cruel darkness. There was no exact silence because the voices above him were still audible.

Despite the fact that all the fear was gone, despite the fact he couldn't breathe anymore, couldn't feel their gloved, greedy hands searching inside him, it is the least to say that he wasn't exactly dead... But he wasn't exactly _alive_, either.

He was empty, and always will be.

* * *

**A/N: Oh angst, how I love thee... I've been kinda in a mood since yesterday, so I felt like writing an angsty-fic because... Meh. I dunno. I like how this turned out though, that's all I can say.**

**This is AU obviously, and doesn't go with my other IZ stories or my Hunger Games/Invader Zim story. It's AU and was written because I felt like it.**

**I'm really horribly depressed recently, so expect another IZ angst one-shot soon. Another AU about Zim and Dib in the future, where Dib gives up on Zim as a friend. Because I feel like writing it.**

**Please review if you can.**


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